Illogical English
by OnyxBird
Summary: Chekov slips up during a ship-wide announcement, getting the crew talking about the illogic of the English language and confusing Spock.


**Illogical English**

Summary: Chekov slips up during a ship-wide announcement, getting the crew talking about the illogic of the English language and confusing Spock.

Another routine day on the bridge of the Enterprise; they had just picked up some raw materials from a remote mining outpost, and were setting course to deliver them to the new Vulcan colony. They would also be supplying manpower to help with some of the initial colony construction. The bridge crew was at their posts, doing routine tasks and getting fairly bored. Kirk was slouched in the captain's chair with nothing much to do.

Sulu spoke up: "Course set, Captain. We should be arriving at Vulcan II in two days."

"Thank you, Sulu. Chekov, please make the announcement to the ship."

Chekov began the announcement. Kirk tried to suppress his smirk every time the colony name was mentioned. It couldn't quite compare to the "Wulcan ewacuation" announcement from their first mission, but he couldn't really bring himself to laugh at that one anyway, not with all the death and destruction that followed. He listened with half his attention, making sure that the announcement went out as he had instructed (not that he didn't trust Chekov, but anyone could make mistakes, and especially with that accent...). _All normal. Now just two more days of warp before—wait, _what_ did Chekov just say? Did he just say something about horny Vulcan women? Does he realize what that means?-Does _Spock_ know what that means?_

"Chekov, what did you just say?"

Chekov looked surprised. "I varned the vork teams to vatch out for sand-storms."

"Before that."

"I said that ze horny species of native vildlife can be dangerous—ze native wermin." Sulu had his head down, trying not to smirk. Both he and Kirk were avoiding looking at Spock.

"Ze wer—oh, _vermin_. The—" he hesitated, "the _horned_ vermin?"

"Yes, Keptin. Ze horny wermin. You asked me to mention them."

_Yes, that was true. There was, in fact, a dangerous horned species native to the planet, which had been known to charge if provoked. _"Um, yes, I did. But Chekov—horny and horned aren't exactly the same thing...And vermin might not have been the best word to use."

Between Sulu and Kirk, they explained the problem (still not looking in Spock's direction), and a very embarrassed Chekov made a clarifying announcement. The bridge settled back into its normal routine, until Chekov suddenly spoke again. "But 'horny' _should_ mean ze same thing as 'horned'."

"Yeah, but—that's English, Chekov. It isn't exactly the most logical language in the world."

Sulu jumped in, "Yeah, haven't you heard the old 'park on a driveway, and drive on a parkway' question?"

Spock finally joined the conversation. "I have not. Please explain."

"Well..." Sulu seemed somewhat at a loss to explain any more clearly, "people park on 'driveways', right? And-"

"What _is_ a 'driveway'?"

Sulu blinked. That explained Spock's confusion, at least. "Um, you know how most people have a piece of pavement in the yard to park their vehicles on?"

One look at Spock's raised eyebrow showed clearly that he _didn't_ know. Kirk noted in passing that he was getting much better at detecting the various shades of meaning indicated by Spock's eyebrows, and tried to figure out where to start. _Oh, wait—how much of Earth has he actually seen outside of Starfleet and the surrounding city?_ "Hey Spock, how much traveling have you done on Earth? Have you seen much of the suburban areas?"

Spock listed the cities he had visited on Starfleet business. Kirk was surprised by how short the list was, and it sounded like Spock had seen little outside of the Starfleet facilities and business districts anyway. _Did his mom just never visit family, or what? Surely she had _some_ relatives or friends still on Earth._ In any case, Spock clearly had little idea of what was normal for suburban human residences, or really any Earth residences outside of big city apartments or Starfleet housing.

Kirk decided to start from the very basics: "Ok, once you get out of the city and into suburban or rural areas, most folks live in free-standing houses surrounded by a yard with grass or other vegetation..."

Spock's eyebrow had taken on a slightly different attitude—apparently Kirk had gone too far into "basics" and was explaining things Spock already knew. He felt slightly defensive. "Hey, look, I don't know what you _do_ know about Earth housing, so I'm starting from the basics, ok?"

After brief consideration, a slight head tilt conveyed judicious approval. "A logical approach. Please continue."

"Ok. So in the yard, most residences have a strip of pavement connecting to the street; it's usually something like concrete or asphalt, or sometimes it's just gravel, but the point is that they can drive their personal vehicles from the road onto their own property without driving on the grass. That area is called the 'driveway'. From there, they can either pull the vehicle into a garage or just leave it sitting on the driveway. That's what Sulu's talking about."

Sulu jumped in again: "So that's the 'driveway'. And then there are streets called 'parkways'-usually big, wide roads leading into town or something. So the question is: Why do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway? Wouldn't it make more sense for the place where you _park_ to be called a parkway?"

Spock considered this for a moment. "That would be more logical. Are you saying that this is a commonly discussed issue among humans? Why then has it not been changed?"

Kirk started laughing. "Because it would be more trouble getting everyone to switch than it is to remember that they're backwards! Besides, if you wanted to make English logically consistent, you'd have to create a completely different language! It's too messed up to fix—and _I _like it that way!"

The look on Spock's face made him laugh even harder. It was the expression reserved for behavior so utterly illogical that he didn't know how to react. Kirk seemed to have a talent for triggering it. He'd seen it for the first time before they had transported to Nero's ship together, as he'd slapped Spock on the shoulder. He privately thought of it as the Vulcan "brain crashed due to rampant illogic—must reboot" look.

From there, the bridge conversation degenerated into examples of English illogic.

"If the plural of 'goose' is 'geese', then why isn't the plural of 'moose' 'meese'?

"How can you 'ship' cargo in a vehicle other than a ship?"

"Isn't 'shipping cargo' an oxymoron in itself? If it's in a ship, then it's not 'going by car', is it?"

The discussion continued cheerfully for some time, soon involving the entire bridge crew, plus Bones and two crewmen from engineering, who came onto the bridge for other purposes and became engrossed in the conversation. Spock observed silently from his station, his head tilted ever so slightly to one side. Kirk had been watching him out of the corner of his eye, and was pretty sure that Spock's eyebrow had not descended back to its normal position since the start of the conversation.

A message from Starfleet command came in just as Sulu was musing that "You know, you hear about people being _over_whelmed and sometimes _under_whelmed, but have you ever heard of someone being just exactly _whelmed_?"

After speaking briefly to the Admiral, Kirk ordered the communication routed to one of the conference rooms, asked Spock to join him there for the discussion, and left Sulu in command. Kirk glanced at Spock as the elevator descended towards the lower deck; the eyebrow had finally been lowered, but he still looked baffled. _Or 'overwhelmed' by our gross illogic_, thought Kirk with amusement. _The brain reboot doesn't quite seem to be working—or maybe it just decided to shut down in self-defense until the absurdity stopped._

"What's wrong, Spock? This can't be the first time you've noticed that English doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

Spock looked up, still frowning slightly. He answered slowly, "No, Captain. I was well aware of certain...idiosyncrasies of the language. However, I was under the impression that humans simply did not notice or pay attention to these inconsistencies; that they did not consider them important. I..." he hesitated, "I assumed they would have been corrected otherwise. Instead you seem to seem to find them...entertaining?" The eyebrow quirked upwards again.

Kirk mulled this over; he understood why Spock was confused, but wasn't really sure how to explain. After a moment, he decided there was no point in trying to find an explanation that would make sense by Vulcan logic; he doubted there _was_ such an explanation. 'Kirk logic' would have to do instead. He shrugged. "Well, we're human. If we're going to be illogical about everything else, why should our language be any different? It wouldn't suit us otherwise."

Spock pondered this and his expression cleared "I suppose you are right; it is no more illogical than many other human customs." He nodded decisively, and changed the subject to the mission report, apparently satisfied by Kirk's explanation of English's bizarre nature.

_Aaaand, successful brain reboot_, thought Kirk,_ I didn't expect that; I figured he'd say that explanation wasn't logical either. He must be getting more used to us than either of us realized. _Kirk smiled at that as he walked into the conference room..


End file.
